Dane Westby Beats JD Beach to the Line

By Larry Lawrence | 6/21/2014 1:05 PM

Photography by Larry Lawrence

BIRMINGHAM, AL. (June 21, 2014) – Dane Westby scored his first Daytona SportBike victory of the season Saturday at Barber Motorsports Park. He did it in exciting fashion, holding off a determined charge by JD Beach that went down to the final turn. Bobby Fong had an amazing comeback to take third. This after crashing and bringing out the red flag early in the race. His crew did a miraculous job of getting his Triumph back together for the race.

The series chase took a dramatic turn. The series leader coming into the race, Jake Gagne, crashed out in an incident that also saw Garrett Gerloff fall.

The top three had a race-long battle with Westby, on the Yamalube/Westby Racing Yamaha R6, holding the point the majority of the way with Beach and Lewis closely following. With four to go Beach, who’d been looking to set up a pass all race, finally made one by drafting Westby on the front straight and diving into turn one first. His lead was short-lived however, since Westby aggressively moved back up front a few turns later.

Lewis then dropped out of the lead battle when he ran wide in a turn and tumbled. He remounted to finish ninth.

The race between the top two came down to the final lap. Beach tried to set up for a possible draft on the final straight, but pushed too hard and got into a wobble coming out of the final turn. He saved it, but his drive was lost and Westby held on to win by 0.310 seconds.

Fong worked his way back into contention after the hard crash early in the race. He got by Benny Solis late to secure the final podium spot.

Jason DiSalvo had issues with his Triumph’s motor in qualifying and was not able to make the start.